Is Javascript bad? Is W3 validation important, or just cross-browser compatibility is? (was: Supermarket repackaging trick again)

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Jul 20, 2006 at 06:53:40PM -0500, Sy Ali wrote:
> I'm going to agree.  It's not hard to make alternatives to JavaScript.
> However, there are some really great tricks which can be done with it
> that end up being tempting enough to use.. and time consuming enough
> to implement that people don't have the time to think about and
> develop javascript alternatives.
> 
> Yes, the logic does flow backwards.. javascript as a primary tool and
> non-javascript is the secondary alternative.  Go figure.
> 
> But to be honest.. if a person doesn't have JavaScript then they're
> fringe and most developers would consider them unimportant.  On the
> other hand, people who have it turned off (like myself) get used to
> turning it back on to click navigation links etc..  =/
> 
> I don't think it's unreasonable to have JavaScript as a necessary part
> of a website, even without an alternative.  However, I still thirst
> for a proper blocking tool which can block certain elements of a
> specific page, and intelligently allow others.  At the moment I just
> have sitewide blocking with temporary unblocking.

People who have to use screen readers or other accesibility devices just
might disagree with you.  People who care about having a secure web
browser would certainly disagree with you.  And of course often the
javascript stuff makes the site harder to use than plain old links,
after all the plain old links are what people expect on a web site.  I
find it very annoying to get to a site where clicking on stuff does
nothing, and after digging through the page source, I find out someone
thought they should do some clever javascript to convert all sorts of
arguments into the actual url to go to, all of which a script on the
server should have already done, and of course their javascript is so
badly written it only works on IE.

--
Len Sorensen
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